i am honestly confused if i just read my fifteenth book for the year or not.

about 2 months ago i cleared my room and decided to get rid of my smattering jodi picoult and twilight collection that reminded me of my poor adolescent taste. my mom found a christian community that took in old books and clothes, so i spent a good deal of my last 2 weeks before i started working just clearing my room. i saw nineteen minutes by jodi and had zero recollection of reading it before – because i still have about 10-15 unread books on my shelf after all – so i kept it aside.

then my mom told me that on monday shems planning to reach out to the christian community again for a second donation and i thought ok time to finish reading the book. i have a habit of flipping right to the end of every book to see how many pages i have to read before it ends and i saw that the font was big and it was just 500 odd pages – so, alright, i thought this shouldn’t take too long to read.

there have been a few times over the past 2 years that i’ve felt “wow i’m getting old” and reading that jodi picoult book made me realise how my appetite for books has evolved, without really realising so. i think it didn’t help that i had recently read we need to talk about kevin, which also revolved around the same theme of suicide shooters, and that was definitely more enthralling and made jodi’s 500 pages look like honest childplay. wow how did i make that sound like i’m some condescending book critic?

where was i.

so i read about 260 pages and all was good and then the book started becoming familiar. it is/was odd that i don’t remember reading the first half before but clearly remembered the second half. which also meant that i wasted 3 hours of my time… in a way, i guess.

..the long weekend is two-thirds over and i’ve never realised how completely liberating it is to just rest at home, even if it was with a pretty shitty book.

fifteen books down, fifteen more to go before the year ends!

also, i think i really may say goodbye to waiflike soon because there really are too many people and too many ghosts who know this space and it no longer feels quiet.